i can't believe an article about jeff dunham moved me to write a post, yet here we are.
last year, comedy central showed a jeff dunham christmas special constantly. i really didn’t think about it. not true - my only thought was, “huh. that dude’s still chugging along.” throughout this year, when there was an hour to fill, comedy central ran some other jeff dunham special. my thought then was usually, “wow, really?” then i’d change the channel.
jeff dunham has been around seemingly forever. that may or may not be true. i just know that i’m an old(er) lady and i’ve seen him on late night TV for quite some time. so when i saw the first commercials touting his new comedy central series, i figured that sounded about right.
now, i’m no jeff dunham fan. i don’t really get the ventriloquist thing. i’m sure as a kid i probably laughed at willie tyler & lester or waylon flowers & madonna - oops, i mean, waylon flowers & madame. but i prefer my puppets to be independently thinking creatures that rent apartments in NYC in the 70’s. but, like i said, dunham’s been around forever and i’ve seen his set, so i recognized the old man puppet or the weird purple one.
i didn’t remember the old black man puppet. or the skeleton with a fucking turban.
dunham is EVERYWHERE right now. the premiere episode of “the jeff dunham show” set a comedy central record of 6.5 million viewers. he was on “30 rock” last week as a representative of the blue collar comedian who gives as good as he gets to those liberal comedy snobs. (that particular “30 rock”, by the way, was one of the weakest ones i’ve ever seen - i HATE that it’s named after my hometown.)
this morning i read an article about him in the new york times sunday magazine. i know that when something about pop culture gets a feature in the NYT, it’s the equivalent of explaining MySpace to your grandparents, but i thought this piece was a little harsh…at first.
For weeks, Dunham’s handlers had been stressing to me how “multigenerational” his audience is…I was hard pressed to find a phrase to describe even a majority. Maybe “not thin.”
ouch, right? the disdain with which the author describes dunham’s fans cheering outside of his bus seeped through my monitor.
so, my initial reaction was, “yo. i can’t really knock the hustle. dude’s been out there grinding. if his fans want to buy ‘peanut’ pajamas, let ‘em at it.” and in a way, i’m proud of myself - i’ve been a haterade-oholic for most of my life. usually my first response to anything like this is, “fuck that dude/bitch.”
then i read this:
Dunham does concede that he’s extra-sensitive to one of his largest constituencies: the conservative “country crowd.” “That’s why I don’t pick on basic Christian-values stuff,” he told me. “Well, I also don’t like to, because that’s the way I was brought up.” He then stopped himself short and said: “Oh, boy. I’m walking into something here.”
Dunham started to explain — as if realizing it for the first time — that this would appear to make the jokes he does about Islam with Achmed “hypocritical.” But he quickly unburdened himself of the idea. “I try to make the majority of my audience laugh,” he said. “That’s my audience. They’ll laugh at the dead terrorist.”
whiskey. tango. foxtrot.
so, yeah. fuck that dude.
look, the show is bad - but we knew that going in, right? that should not have been a surprise. and that it captured so many eyes - okay, that’s a little bit of a surprise, but i didn’t realize he’s been selling out 10,000 seat venues (!).
i say, let him keep doing what he’s doing, because right now, he’s obviously the man. and my favorite kind of comedy sticks it to the man.
